“You claim to be Belas Salgo’s daughter?” repeated Miss Carrington, at last.
“I am his daughter. I cannot remember my mother—much. But my father I remember very well. Why, I traveled everywhere with him! All over southern Europe we went. And to Algiers, and the other north coast cities. He played everywhere about the Mediterranean until he died. And then,” said the girl, simply, “I lost all happiness—and I was brought to this great, cold country.”
Miss Carrington had listened with her head resting on her hand and her eyes watching the girl from behind her glasses. Now she said:
“Well, I do not believe you are Belas Salgo’s child—not the Belas Salgo I have good reason to remember. No. But I will take you home with me and we will talk this matter over.
“I was correcting some examination papers,” she added, going to the desk and turning out the student lamp. “But they may go until another time,” and with a sigh she put on her hat and cloak, and taking the Gypsy girl’s hand led her out of the school building, the darkened corridors of which she knew so well.
[CHAPTER XX—INTER-CLASS RIVALRY]
If Eve Sitz had been outside of the schoolhouse tower, being held by the girls all of this time, she must certainly have been by now at the point of exhaustion, and so must they.
But Eve had dropped just right, had caught the wire with her gloved hands just as she had expected to, and then swung down and hung from the steel strand for a few seconds to get her breath.
Nellie and Bobby, leaning out of neighboring windows, cheered her on.
“Hurrah, girls!” declared the irrepressible. “She’s going to do it. There she goes—hand under hand!”